I turn the soil with my spade. This year, we’re attempting strawberries, snap peas, and tomatoes, in addition to what we grew last year.
“Wrennie, you want to help plant these?”
My eleven-year-old mmhmms at me.
She flips through the pages of Birds of Britain and Europe spread heavy across her lap, announcing, “Sylvia atricapilla—the Eurasian Blackcap.”
She gestures at two new arrivals. One on our apple tree. Another in the branches of our soft-budding lilac.
“Mum, I think they’re a pair. That one’s a male. And that’s a female.”
Karim jokes she’ll be the next Attenborough. I say, better, because she’ll be a woman.
“That’s lovely. Maybe we’ll have some baby birds soon.” I loosen the plants from their black plastic containers, breaking apart small rootballs.
“Some Blackcaps overwinter in the Middle East, then migrate here for breeding.”
Karim thinks strawberries are audacious to grow ourselves. But imagine, I said, how sweet they’ll be from our own garden.
“That’s where Auntie lives, right? Where the war is?”
Eleven’s a tricky age. They read a whole lot, devouring entire encyclopedias. When you think they’re not listening, they are. They’re too old to be lied to. Too young to die.
I wonder what I should say to be a good mother. I think of my sister-in-law with Wren’s cousins, holding them close as booming ash threatens from the sky. I wonder what these birds have seen.
She comes up beside me, pulling on her gardening gloves, bright blue ones adorned with birds in flight.
“I reckon those Blackcaps will like the strawberries.”
I hand her a shovel, my bangs falling over my eyes. I think of all the mothers—and what they’re supposed to say to their children. I think of the sweet summer fruit.
“That’ll be lovely, won’t it?”
Mizuki Yamagen is a writer from Japan, living in the Rocky Mountains. In her writing, Mizuki explores people in strange places and strange times. Her poetry can be found at Eye to the Telescope. Her writing is forthcoming at HAD.
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